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ARGARET KELLY is dead, and I need not scruple to call her by her own name. For it is certain that she left no kin to mourn her. She did all the mourning herself in her lifetime, and better than that when there was need. She nursed her impetuous Irish father and her gentle English mother in their old age—like the loving daughter she was-and, last of all, her only sister. When she had laid them away, side by side, she turned to face the world alone, undaunted, with all the fighting grit of her people from both sides of the Channel. If troubles came upon her for which she was no match, it can be truly said that she went down fighting. And who of her blood would

ask for more?

What I have set down here is almost as much as any one ever heard about her people. She was an old woman when she came in a way of figuring in these pages, and all that lay behind her.

Of her own past this much was known: that she had once been an exceedingly prosperous designer of dresses, with a brown-stone house on Lexington Avenue, and some of the city's wealthiest women for her customers. Carriages with liveried footmen were not rarely seen at her door, and a small army of seamstresses worked out her plans. Her sister was her bookkeeper and the business head of the house. Fair as it seemed, it proved a house of cards, and with the sister's death it fell. One loss followed another. Margaret Kelly knew nothing of money or the ways of business. She lost the house, and with it her fine clients. For a while she made her stand in a flat with the most faithful of her sewing-women to help her. But that also had to go when more money went out than came in and nothing was left for the landlord. Younger rivals crowded her out. She was stamped "old-fashioned," and that was the end of it. Her last friend left her.

on the

Worry and perplexity made her ill, and while she was helpless in Bellevue Hospital, being in a ward with no "next friend books, they sent her over to the Island with the paupers. Against this indignity her proud spirit arose and made the body forget its ills. She dragged herself down to the boat that took her back to the city, only to find that her last few belongings were gone, the little hall room she had occupied in a house in Twenty-ninth Street locked against her, and she, at seventy-five, on the street, penniless, and without one who cared for her in all the world.

Yes, there was one. A dressmaker who had known her in happier days saw from her window opposite Father McGlynn's church a white-haired woman seek shelter within the big storm-doors night after night in the bitter cold of midwinter, and recognized in her the once proud and prosperous Miss Kelly. Shocked and grieved, she went to the district office of the Charities with money to pay for shelter and begged them to take the old lady in charge and save her from want.

And what a splendid old lady she was! Famished with the hunger of weeks and months, but with pride undaunted, straight as an arrow under the burden of heavy years, she met the visitor with all the dignity of a queen. The deep lines of suffering in her face grew deeper as she heard her message. She drew the poor black alpaca about her with a gesture as if she were warding off a blow: "Why," she asked, "should any one intrude upon her to offer aid? She had not asked for anything, and was nɔt-" she faltered a bit, but went on resolutely―" did not want anything."

"Not work?" asked her caller, gently. "Would you not like me to find some work for you?"

A sudden light came into the old eyes. "Work-yes, if she could get that—" And then the reserve of the long, lonely years

They found her a place to sew in a house where she was made welcome as one of the family. For all that, she went reluctantly. All her stubborn pluck went down before the kindness of these strangers. She was afraid that her hand had lost its cunning, that she could not do justice to what was asked of her, and she stipulated that she should receive only a dollar for her day's work, if she could earn that. When her employer gave her the dollar at the end of the day, the look that came into her face made that woman turn quickly to hide her tears.

The worst of Margaret Kelly's hardships were over. She had a roof over her head, and an “address." If she starved, that was her affair. And slowly she opened her heart to her new friends and gave them room there. I have a letter of that day from one of them that tells how they were getting on: "She has a little box of a room where she almost froze all winter. A window right over her bed and no heat. But she is a great old soldier and never whines. Occasionally she comes to see me, and I give her something to eat, but what she does between times God alone knows. When I give her a little change, she goes to the bake-shop, but I think otherwise goes without and pretends she is not hungry. A business man who knows her told her if she needed nourishment to let him know; she said she did not need anything. Her face looks starvation. When she was ill in the winter, I tried to get her into a hospital; but she would not go, and no wonder. If she had only a couple of dollars a week she could get along, as I could get her clothing.

She wears black for her sister."

The couple of dollars were found and the hunger was banished with the homelessness. Margaret Kelly had two days' work every week, and in the feeling that she could support herself once more new life came to her. She was content.

So two years passed. In the second summer the old woman, now nearing eighty, was sent out in the country for a vacation of

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five or six weeks. She came back strong and happy; the rest and the peace had sunk into her soul. "Some of the tragedy has gone out of her face," her friend wrote to She was looking forward with courage to taking up her work again when what seemed an unusual opportunity came her way. A woman who knew her story was going abroad, leaving her home up near Riverside Drive in charge of a caretaker. She desired a companion for her, and offered the place to Miss Kelly. It was so much better a prospect than the cold and cheerless hall room that her friends advised her to accept, and Margaret Kelly moved into the luxurious stone house uptown, and once more was warmly and snugly housed for the winter with congenial company.

Along

Man proposes and God disposes. in February came a deadly cold spell. The thermometer fell below zero. In the worst of it Miss Kelly's friend from the "office," happening that way, rang the bell to inquire how she was getting on. No one answered. She knocked at the basement door, but received no reply. Concluding that the two women were in an upper story out of hearing of the bell, she went away, and on her return later in the day tried again, with no better success. It was too cold for the people in the house to be out, and her suspicions were aroused. She went to the police station and returned with help. The door was forced and the house searched. In the kitchen they found the two old women sitting dead by the stove, one with her head upon the other's shoulder. The fire had long been out and their bodies were frozen. There was plenty of fuel in the house. Apparently they had shut off the draught to save coal and raised the lid of the stove, perhaps to enjoy the glow of the fire in the gloaming. The escaping gas had put them both to sleep before they knew their peril.

So the police and the coroner concluded. "Two friends," said the official report. Margaret Kelly had found more than food and shelter. Life at the last had given her its best gift, and her hungry old heart was filled.

ISS WALD of the Nurses' Settlement told me the story of Peter, and I set it down here as I remember it. She will forgive the slips. Peter has nothing to forgive; rather, he would not

have were he alive. He was all to the good for the friendship he gave and took. Looking at it across the years, it seems as if in it were the real Peter. The other, who walked around, was a poor knave of a pretender.

He came to me with the card of one of our nurses, a lanky, slipshod sort of fellow of nineteen or thereabouts. The nurse had run across him begging in a tenement. When she asked him why he did that, he put a question himself: "Where would a fellow beg if not among the poor?" And now there he stood, indifferent, bored if anything. shiftless, yet with some indefinite appeal, waiting to see what I would do. She had told him that he had better go and see me. and he had come. He had done his part; it was up to me now.

He was a waiter, he said, used to working South in the winter, but it was then too late. He had been ill. He suppressed a little hacking cough that told its own story. He was a lunger." Did he tramp? Yes, he said, and I noticed that his breath smelled of whisky. He made no attempt to hide the fact.

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"No," said he; a man treated me." "And did you have to take whisky?"

There was no trace of resentment in his retort: "Well, now, what would he have said if I'd took milk?" It was as one humoring a child.

He went South on a waiter job. From St. Augustine he sent me a letter that ended: "Write me in care of the post-office; it is the custom of the town to get your letters there." Likely it was the first time in his life that he had had a mail address. "This is a very nice place," ran his comment on the old Spanish town, "but for business give me New York."

The Wanderlust gripped Peter, and I heard from him next in the Southwest. For years letters came from him at long inter

THERE HE STOOD, IN DIFFERENT, BORED IF ANYTHING, SHIFTLESS vals, showing that he had not forgotten me. Once another tramp called on me with greeting from him and a request for shoes. When "business" next took Peter to New York and he called, I told him that I valued his acquaintance, but did not care for that of many more tramps. He knew the man at once.

"Oh," he said, "isn't he a rotter? I didn't think he would do that." They were tramping in Colorado, he explained, and one night the other man told him of his mother. Peter, in the intimacy of the camp-fire, spoke of me. The revelation of the other's baseness was like the betrayal of some sacred rite. I would not have liked to be in the man's place when next they met, if they ever did.

Some months passed, and then one day a

message came from St. Joseph's Home: "I guess I am up against it this time." He did not want to trouble me, but would I come and say good-by? I went at once. Peter was dying, and he knew it. Sitting by his bed, my mind went back to our first meeting -perhaps his did too-and I said: You have been real decent several times, Peter. You must have come of good people; don't you want me to find them for you?" He didn't seem to care very much, but at last he gave me the address in Boston of his only sister. But she had moved, and it was a long and toilsome task to find her. In the end,

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however, a friend located her for me. She was a poor Irish dressmaker, and Peter's old father lived with her. She wrote in answer to my summons that they would come, if Peter wanted them very much, but that it would be a sacrifice. He had always been their great trial-a born tramp and idler.

Peter was chewing a straw when I told him. I had come none too soon. His face told me that. He heard me out in silence. When I asked if he wanted me to send for them, he stopped chewing a while and ruminated. "They might send me the money instead,” he decided, and resumed his straw.

OCTOR, what shall I do? My father wants me to tend bar on Sunday. I am doing it nights, but Sunday I don't want to. What shall I do?" The pastor of Olivet Church looked kindly at the lad who stood before him, cap in hand. The last of the. Sunday-school had trailed out; the boy had waited for this opportunity. Dr. Schauffler knew and liked him as one of his bright boys. He knew, too, his homethe sordid, hard-fisted German father and his patient, long-suffering mother.

"What do you think yourself, Karl ?” "I don't want to, Doctor. I know it is wrong." "All right then, don't.”

"But he will kick me out and never take me back. He told me so, and he'll do it." "Well-"

The boy's face flushed. At fourteen, to decide between home and duty is not easy. And there was his mother. Knowing him, the Doctor let him fight it out alone. Presently he squared his shoulders as one who has made his choice.

"I can't help it if he does," he said; "it isn't right to ask me."

"If he does, come straight here. Good-by!" Sunday night the door-bell of the pastor's study rang sharply. The Doctor laid down his book and answered it himself. On the threshold stood Karl with a small bundle done up in a bandana handkerchief.

"Well, I am fired," he said.

"Come in, then. I'll see you through." The boy brought in his bundle. It contained a shirt, three collars, and a pair of socks, hastily gathered up in his retreat. The doctor hefted it.

better for it sometimes. Great battles have been won without baggage trains."

The boy looked soberly at his all.

"I have got to win now, Doctor. Get me a job, will you?"

Things moved swiftly with Karl from that Sunday. Monday morning saw him at work as errand-boy in an office, earning enough for his keep at the boarding-house where his mother found him at times when his father was alone keeping bar. That night he reg istered at the nearest evening school to complete his course. The Doctor kept a grip on his studies, as he had promised, and saw him through. It was not easy sledding, but it was better than the smelly saloon. From the public school he graduated into the Cooper Institute, where his teachers soon took notice of the wide-awake lad. Karl was finding himself. He took naturally to the study of languages, and threw himself into it with all the ardor of an army marching without baggage train to meet an enemy. He had "got to win," and he did. All the while he earned his living working as a clerk by day-with very little baggage yet to boast of—and sitting up nights with his books. When he graduated from the Institute, the battle was half won.

The other half he fought on his own ground, with the enemy's tents in sight. His attainments procured for him a place in the Lenox Library, where his opportunity for reading was limited only by his ambition. He made American history and literature his special study, and in the course of time achieved great distinction in his field. "And they were married and lived happily ever after " might by right be added to his story. He did marry an East Side girl who had been his